


The Significance of Fire

by DawnOfTomorrow



Series: The Significance of Touching Series [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Fire is fuelled by wood no matter what, M/M, Madara realises it later, Not Fluff, sometimes dreams need to come true more than once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 08:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16698763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnOfTomorrow/pseuds/DawnOfTomorrow
Summary: Madara didn’t let people close to him. Well, not easily, anyway. Most people didn’t care to try, what with his temper, his reputation, and his powers. Madara liked it that way. He didn’t care for people. The few people he let close were just exceptions.There had been signs of it before, moments of almost-realisation, usually fuelled by low light, sake and Hashirama’s smiles...but he’d never let the feeling within him rear up, never gave it a name, not until the end. There was a place for beasts like him, and he would find it or die trying.In the end, he died trying.He died the way he’d always known he would, the only way possible – on the end of Hashirama’s sword. His Sharingan dutifully recorded the sight of the man Madara could now admit he loved, if only to himself. He wouldn’t have the memory for very long, but he treasured it all the same.





	The Significance of Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second part of a series of one-shots covering the feelings and dreams of Konoha's founders, featuring different viewpoints, different angles of the same part of the story. All canon-compliant...let's face it, Hashimada is as close to canon as it could be without the two of them doing it on screen.

Madara didn’t let people close to him. Well, not easily, anyway. Most people didn’t care to try, what with his temper, his reputation, and his powers. Madara liked it that way. He didn’t care for people. The few people he let close were just exceptions.

Izuna had been one, before his death. Hashirama was another. Madara had grudgingly accepted his foolish friend’s behaviour back when they skipped stones at the river. What choice had he had after all? The Senju had been far too charismatic, far too...pitiful for Madara to refuse him.

Really, he’d looked like a kicked puppy every time Madara had yelled. Despite what the rumours said, Madara wasn’t a monster...though he also didn’t stop kicking his oldest friend. That was his nature.

He didn’t enjoy the way Hashirama touched. He tolerated it, at best. He only realised the reasons for it late in life. Realised, just as he was about to turn his back on Konoha, that it wasn’t the man’s touches to him that bothered him, but those to others.

There had been signs of it before, moments of almost-realisation, usually fuelled by low light, sake and Hashirama’s smiles...but he’d never let the feeling within him rear up, never gave it a name, not until it was almost too late.

He indulged himself only when he knew it was already over when the die had been cast, their paths laid out before them. Then he faced up to what he felt for the other man, what had been niggling in the back of his mind since he was a child. It felt good, as good as it hurt and it fuelled him in a way only battle ever had.

He’d missed his battles with Hashirama when peace had been made. In battle, between the clash of their power, the chakra in the air and their voices screaming for or at each other, Madara could be himself, could let himself go unchecked, always safe in the knowledge that Hashirama would neither kill him nor let himself be killed by his power...and then there were his eyes.

Madara’s were either black or red, but Hashirama’s were always brown. Always the same, unchanging and calm brown. In battle, he could stare to his heart’s content, knowing that the only thing those brown orbs saw was him.

He relished the feeling, always coming back for more. He didn’t know what Hashirama felt, but he was well aware that the other looked around the battlefield in every single one of their conflicts, always looking for Madara, zeroing in on him instantly.

Had Madara been a little less emotionally damaged, he would have probably understood sooner, before it was too late...but he wasn’t, and he didn’t. Peace came, and with it did something Madara didn’t like – unrest.

The safety of his clan, of the children, were a priority for him, always had been. In Konoha, they had all of that...but a part of him, one locked away deep within him, grew impatient, unhappy. He enjoyed the time he spent in the village. He wasn’t ignorant of how happy their shared dream made Hashirama and for what it was worth, Madara wanted his friend to be happy.

He also envied him, envied him for his ability to be so happy, so easily. Madara didn’t know what his own happiness was, didn’t know where to look for it...but the search led him away from Konoha, away from Hashirama.

In the end, leaving hurt more than expected. Not as much as other things hurt – not as much as the loss of Izuna, or his other brothers. More than the injuries he received in battle, more than the day he watched Hashirama meet the beautiful Uzumaki Mito. It was a close call with that one – he wasn’t sure which really hurt more.

Madara wasn’t ignorant of the power an arranged marriage would bring with it and how beneficial it would be to Konoha, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He drank more than usual that night, eerily aware of the red-but-not-sharingan-red eyes of Hashirama’s little brother as for once, he slung his arm around the Hokage.

He did it to spite Tobirama of course...and because he wanted to. Still, that day was only one of the many things that led him to leave. He knew well large parts of the village didn’t want him, wanted him gone. His friend was ignorant of it, too happy being his usual smiling self to notice...and Madara didn’t want him to notice.

Hashirama didn’t have his temper but he didn’t doubt the man would get angry on his behalf if he learned of the way people looked at Madara. He’d overheard it often enough, how Hashirama had scolded his own brother for rude remarks against him.

As he finally decided to leave, decided to tell Hashirama, he realised that those voices, those looks had been right all along. Madara didn’t belong to Konoha, not the way Hashirama did. He’d been offered the Hokage title twice, and he’d had to decline both times. The village needed Hashirama at first, and later he was already well aware that it would never accept him.

Tobirama was a better choice – in any case, seeing the two brothers’ faces carved on that rock was far more appropriate than his next to Hashirama’s. They had never been the same, never stood on the same level after all. Not in power, not in anything.

For Madara, Hashirama was the only person left alive that was worth looking at, chasing after. Hashirama, he knew, loved everyone. It was fundamentally different for them, and he accepted it gracefully. He wasn’t a graceful person, of course, but that was fine too – there was a place for beasts like him, and he would find it or die trying.

In the end, he died trying. He died the way he’d always known he would, the only way possible – on the end of Hashirama’s sword. He’d died satisfied that way – he’d seen it coming, after all. All his life, he’d known one would have to kill the other, and he’d known it would be him that would die for almost as long.

As the cold steel blade pierced his chest, he hardly felt it – all he could feel was the burning sensation he had finally accepted, learned to live with. The steel wasn’t enough, wasn’t what he wanted, but at the very least it was a fitting end for a man like him.

His only regret was that Hashirama would suffer for it, he knew. Despite his faults, his foolishness, Hashirama genuinely cared for him, asked him to return with him until the last moment. Even if Madara had wanted to accept his hand, he couldn’t have.

He’d never been good at taking the man’s hand after all, and he knew if he reached for it once, he’d do it again, and again, and again...and eventually he’d be reaching for something that wasn’t there anymore.

No, his feelings meant he could never go back to Konoha, but that was good too – it meant that his death would protect Konoha from himself. It would protect Madara too, from the inevitable heartbreak of being left behind by the one he’d been chasing since they were children. Madara much preferred to be chased instead, to the very end.

He got his wish.

Hashirama put his sword through his chest, as he had known he would. It didn’t soothe the searing fire in his heart as much as he’d hoped, and as he looked back at the other and smiled, he indulged himself in thinking ‘What if’, just for a moment.

What if...he’d accepted his feelings, confessed them even? What if...he’d taken that hand? What if...Hashirama felt that fire too? What if...the water on the other man’s cheeks wasn’t water so much as tears?

The last at the very least was a distinct possibility with his emotional friend and Madara smirked at how twisted he was in the end – a real monster. After all, only a monster would be happy to see someone else cry, happy that they were saddened by the loss of the one they themselves had killed.

His Sharingan dutifully recorded the sight of the man Madara could now admit he loved, if only to himself. He wouldn’t have the memory for very long, but he treasured it all the same.

As it turned out, he was wrong. He had that memory and the feelings that came with them for a VERY long time. Longer than he wanted. What he had wanted was a death at Hashirama’s hands...what he got was a half-life, kept alive by power and cells from the very same man he wanted to be killed by.

Over time, it changed him, but no matter how much it did, those feelings stayed constant. There isn’t much that can change fire, and wood only ever makes it glow stronger – Madara knew this as surely as he knew that somehow, someday, he would face Hashirama in battle again. The inferno within him didn't allow for anything else. It would change fate if necessary...after all, Hashirama had changed the world. Who was to say Madara couldn't' change fate in return?

Perhaps then, he would get his wish and have it seen through all the way to the end.


End file.
